Envy is the basis of democracy.

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.